Sad week-end for us movie-fans

[Capitaine Vengeur]

On Saturday, we lost Maximilian Schell, at 83 (The Young Lions, Topkapi, Cross of Iron, A Bridge Too Far...). This Sunday, we mourn the death, at 46 only, of Philip Seymour Hoffmann (Capote, Mission Impossible III, The Boat That Rocked, The Master, and just recently, Hunger Games: Catching Fire...). Two charismatic actors in totally opposite ways. Two giants never fall without a third one stumbling. Have I missed one more sad loss?

[von Baur]

I hadn't heard of Schell's passing. That's very sad.

 

As for Hoffman, I feel for his family, not so much for him. After making much of his drug addiction and overcoming it, he was found with a needle in his arm and heroin in his apartment. Stupidity, thy name is "addict".

 

Don't whine at me about "how difficult it is". I've seen it. My father passed away in 1990 at 66 years old because his lungs (and whatever else) had been ravaged by his addiction to cigarettes. He never got to meet my only child, born 15 mmonths later, and my son never got to meet his grandfather. My wife of 20 years died on Valentine's Day in 2011, only 50 years old and only 6 weeks after our son had entered the Army. She had various health issues but the biggest contributor was an addiction to the same drug that killed my father, her father and her mother. This has haunted him and hurt me for three years now and will hurt both of us for the rest of our lives. I hurt eevry time I think of how she apparently loved cigarettes more than she loved us.

 

Too many people have successfully beaten addiction to whatever substance you want to name. If they can do it, anyone can. I know it's not easy. But at the same time,it is. As easy as Nancy Reagan said 40-some years ago. "Just say no."